Comment by vjvjvjvjghv
6 days ago
Hossenfelder is falling into the same trap most people who make their living off social media do. Lots of money can be made with conspiracies and controversies, much more than with boring facts. This just seems to creep up over time on most of these people. Jordan Peterson fell into the same trap. He used to have pretty interesting insights but then he developed a huge loyal following and over time he felt like he knew the truth about pretty much everything. And the followers were happily cheering him on.
While I agree, it is worth adding that it is not a "natural consequence". Other than them have similar following and yet don't fall into that trap.
People who have fallen into that trap are not "average people" who are "victim of social media mechanism": their actions were and are still the result of their choices, and they still have a brain that should allow them to step back and see what they are doing. The fact that they felt into that trap tells us something about their qualities: they are poor analysts and we should not give them much credits (the fact they did decent analyses at first does not exclude the fact that they are poor analysts, just that they managed to get decent results despite being badly equipped for it).